Bob Huke

Our friend and colleague, Bob Huke, passed away on January 17, 2004. Born March 3, 1925, Bob was a devoted and beloved geographer and friend of Dartmouth. He joined the AAG in 1949.

Huke earned his undergraduate from Dartmouth in 1948. After getting his Ph.D. in geography from Syracuse in 1953, he started teaching at Dartmouth immediately. In 1990 Bob retired and became an active emeritus professor. He was also a veteran and served honorably in the Marine Corps, where he received the Purple Heart after being wounded in Okinawa during WWII.

Bob enriched the lives of many through his teaching, research, and his involvement with the AAG. He served on numerous AAG committees at both the national level and as part of the New England St. Lawrence Valley division and he was a focal component of the Asia Specialty Group. Bob’s research interests focused primarily on Southeast Asia, and he was a specialist in agricultural and population geography. Bob was also extremely active in the Retired Geographers Specialty Group and served as their secretary-treasurer in 1999 and led hugely successful trips of the Retired Geographers Organization to Myanmar and Vietnam.

He had a long-term collaboration with the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Banos, Philippines. Bob wrote a series of key papers in the 1970s on the Green Revolution, and he had an international reputation for his work on the geography of food and hunger, the Green Revolution, and Southeast Asia. He published extensively and he was the chief investigator on projects funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, NASA, and the Fulbright Foundation.

To memorialize Bob’s ardent field scholarship and devoted undergraduate teaching, the department is establishing a research travel fund. We have numerous students doing senior honors theses every year, with many of them travelling overseas (as Bob would love). Donations may be made out to: Bob Huke Student Research Award, and mailed to: Kelly White, Department of Geography, 6017 Fairchild, Dartmouth College, Hanover NH 03755.

Bob Huke (Necrology). 2004. AAG Newsletter 39(3): 11.